


You're a Star That I Can See (the Space Pirates 3 & 5 Sentences Remix)

by Skitz_phenom



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/M, M/M, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 08:15:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3889039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skitz_phenom/pseuds/Skitz_phenom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With war coming to Camelot and threatening to not only spill over into the peaceful system of Albion, but the rest of the galaxy as well, Merlin is forced to activate a powerful techno-magic that will shift the whole of the system (and their enemy) out of time.  Gwen and Leon know they're the only hope to rescue their fearless High King and his Grand Warlock, even if it means finding a lost planet that's little more than myth and legend. Of course, being on the run from Gwen's people on Odin V (since she did breach that whole betrothal contract) and continually ducking bounty hunters and mercenaries doesn't make the impossible task any easier, but they're bound and determined to do whatever it takes to get the job done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're a Star That I Can See (the Space Pirates 3 & 5 Sentences Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Three and Five Sentence Fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/836640) by [nomical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomical/pseuds/nomical). 



> Humble and grateful thanks to my beta for hand-holding me through this (especially when I was waylaid by ridiculously annoying illness)! And thanks to the Remix mods for their absolutely astonishing patience!! [nomical](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nomical/pseuds/nomical) \- you were so open in your offerings, and OMG too much amazing stuff to choose from! But, this one just jumped out at me, so I truly hope this is something that you like!

“If you’ve not cleared the atmosphere in the next twenty-seven minutes, I’m not sure you’ll make it.” Merlin’s words were spoken urgently through clenched teeth.   “I don’t know if I can hold back the reaction any longer than that,” he cautioned.

Gwen gave a quick nod and then – realizing that Merlin likely couldn’t see anything beyond the bright swirling lights of the orb on its pedestal and the magic that flickered all around – said aloud, “Of course, Merlin. We’re leaving now. We just…” She trailed off, hating the finality of the rest of that sentence. There’d been dozens of goodbyes before this, between all of them, but this was the last.

Merlin’s mouth quirked at the corners and his gaze – glowing a bright yellow-gold almost as radiant as the scintillating orb – flicked in her direction momentarily. “I know, Gwen.” He inclined his head in the barest motion to Gwen’s left where Leon stood just behind her shoulder. “Leon. My friends, I will miss you.”

“Be careful,” Gwen called out, “and stay safe. Stay alive. This isn’t goodbye,” she added with a breathy voice that threatened tears, “not forever.”

“We will find a way to come back for you,” Leon added, firm and sure, though his voice sounded just as shaky as Gwen’s. “We’ll find Gedref’s world and the temporal key to get you back.”

No one said what they were likely all thinking: that despite the evidence before them (the temporal translocation orb that Merlin had activated) the labyrinthine ruins of planet Gedref were mere myth; a storied place whispered about at spaceports and commerce planets across the galaxy. Someone always knew someone whose great-great-great Grandsire’s co-pilot’s half-brother twice-removed had come across the fabled planet and its technological wonders. No one ever spoke of anyone who’d been there any less than five to six generations ago. It was an impossibility at best.

And it was their only hope.

Merlin gave a brief nod, but said nothing.

Finally Arthur, who’d been standing just a few feet behind Merlin, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, eyes cast to the floor, said softly. “We will, Merlin. That’s a promise.”

Gwen bit at her lip seeing the expression that crossed Merlin’s face; the one that Arthur couldn’t see. Even with his eyes flashing like solar flares and his jaw tight with his efforts, there was no hiding his grief.

She felt Leon’s hand on her shoulder. “C’mon. We should give them a minute,” he said, pitching his voice for her ears alone.

Gwen stared at the scene before her – Merlin with his arms outstretched, fingers splayed while filaments of energy swirled and twined between them and the orb, his head up, teeth now bared with exertion, and Arthur, High King of Albion, stood behind him like some kind of supplicant, his head still bowed, his eyes squeezed tight and one hand just reaching out but unwilling to make that final connection - and she nodded.

Leon’s hand slid down the length of her arm and his fingers hooked tightly in hers. He gave the barest tug and then Gwen turned and all but dashed past him, towing him after her as she hurried from the chamber.

Outside, the light from Camelot’s binary suns filtered through the wavering pinkish-silver energy shield that bubbled overhead, spreading further and further from the Central Spire through Merlin’s efforts. It cast the landscape in an odd hue, turning the neatly sculpted lawns and geometric hedgerows an eerie purple. Gwen scrambled down the long staircase that led from the citadel, feet skipping every other step in uncharacteristic clumsiness, and stumbled to a halt at the edge of a lev-walkway trimmed by elegant greenery. Leon’s firm grip on her hand kept her upright, from putting a foot off the path, and he drew her against him to steady her further.

“I can’t…” she began, but couldn’t find the words.

“I know,” Leon replied, because he understood.

Gwen sighed against his chest, dropping her forehead to rest against the gold mesh that adorned the shoulders of his uniform. “We’re abandoning him.”

She felt Leon’s face – his cheek and the strong curve of his jaw – press gently against the top of her head. “It’s what we have to do. You know that Merlin’s sacrifice will save not only Camelot, but the entire system of Albion. He’s the Grand Warlock, the only techno-lock powerful enough to have a chance in hell of pulling this off.”

“I know,” Gwen nodded, feeling the pull and tug in her hair as it caught in the two-day-old whiskers of Leon’s scruff. “I know that, Leon. But… he’ll be alone here. It’s not right. It’s —“

The rhythmic tapping of hard-soled boots on the neu-marble steps caught Gwen’s attention, stopping her words, and she lifted her head from Leon’s chest with a little start of guilt.

Arthur reached the bottom of the staircase and stalked towards them purposefully. His face was set in a grim mask, eyes flinty and lips thin. “Let’s go,” he barked out, sweeping past them. His forceful stride sent air currents billowing out the crimson half-cloak that hung off one shoulder, dragging it taut from the heavy golden medallions that fastened it to his ceremonial hauberk.

“Arthur,” Gwen called out, “wait!”

Arthur slowed, but didn’t stop. “You heard Merlin,” he barked back, nearly shouting to be heard.

“Arthur!” Gwen repeated, her own voice rising to match his both in volume and tone, “Stop!”

He must’ve caught both the severity and sincerity because he stopped like he’d reached the end of a tether, jerking back and then turning on a heel to face her.

“What, Guinevere?” he snapped, and then seemed to realize how harsh he sounded because he took a few steps in her direction and said almost imploringly, “We really haven’t the time for this. Every moment we waste… Merlin can only hold on so long.”

Gwen pressed her lips together a moment, steeling herself, and then blurted, “You can’t do this, Arthur.”

Arthur frowned and continued towards her. “Can’t do what?”

Pressing back against the stolid form of Leon, using him as the wall that she’d need to hold her steady against the oncoming tide of Arthur’s rage, Gwen replied, “Can’t leave him.”

Again, Arthur halted abruptly. His face, already gloomy, darkened like a storm cloud had rolled in over it. “That’s not up for discussion,” he said curtly.

Before she could reply again Arthur swept out an arm, cutting it through the air like he’d swing a phase-blade. “No, Gwen. Look, I… appreciate what you’re trying to do. For me… for him. But, it’s not possible. You of all people know that if you leave Camelot and the boundaries of Albion without me, you’ll be declared traitor and the alliance would end. The conditions of our betrothal are clear and Albion cannot afford to lose the support of Odin V. Not now.”

As always when reminded of the decreed mandates of her relationship with Arthur, and its repercussion with Arthur’s Knight High Lieutenant Leon as well, Gwen bristled with a familiar onrush of bitterness.   Not towards Arthur; he was as bound by the ages-old contractual alliance between her home system and Albion as Gwen. And not towards Leon, because he’d only ever been silent in his adoration and treated her with respect and courtesy and kindness (at least until the last solar-months when the war had grown beyond a petty conflict between Albion and the Mercian Confederation and spilled over to threaten peace throughout the entirety of the galaxy, and he’d let her nudge him just past the boundaries of propriety).

No, her quiet-rage was directed towards the Chancellors of Odin V who’d bartered the ridiculous trade agreement to see her made High Queen of Albion. They’d edited and ‘refined’ the contracts – the ones that had been in place for nearly twelve decades but required revision and re-signing every third-solar year – and slipped some of the more severe changes under the nose of Gwen’s ailing father. He’d signed it nearly from his deathbed, none-the-wiser, and then they forced Arthur – twisting his need for reinforcements in the conflict until he’d been willing to agree to almost anything – to sign as well.  

“But you’re wrong,” she finally shot back, letting the long-burning fuel of her bitterness add heat to her words. “Because if Merlin is successful, Albion and the Mercian Confederacy fleet will be locked outside of our time and Albion’s need for any support will cease to exist! The conflict won’t be able to carry over without the troops to give it strength.”

Arthur visibly bristled at the unspoken statement about what that would mean for Merlin. “What are you saying, Gwen?” Arthur retorted, just as riled, mean when he was never mean to her. “That you’d willingly become a fugitive from your own people just so that I could stay —“

 

He bit off the end of his words, but Gwen heard them regardless.

Stay with Merlin. Not abandon him to whatever fate awaited him when he finished extending the shield beyond just Camelot, to the surrounding solar system to contain all of Albion (and the invading fleet) and then activated the Temporal Displacement Orb. They didn’t even know if he’d survive it…

“Yes!” She exclaimed. “Yes, Arthur, that’s exactly what I’m saying. What do I care about being High Queen of Camelot? It means nothing if we cannot save Albion—“

“Exactly,” Arthur interrupted. “Which is why you and I and Leon are going to do whatever it takes to find Gedref’s world and a way to rescue Merlin.”

“No, Arthur.” Gwen stated firmly. “It’s why Leon and I are going to take _Excalibur_ and do whatever it takes to find Gedref’s world. And it’s why _you_ are going to stay here with Merlin.”

She could see how badly Arthur wanted that.   His whole body stood taut and practically juddering, ready to launch past her and bolt back up to the Central Spire where Merlin worked his odd bastardization of magic and technology. Still he shook his head. “You’ll be an outlaw, Gwen. A fugitive. You know that no matter what happens here, the Chancellory of Odin won’t stand for you not honoring the contract. They won’t ever stop hunting you down for your treason.”

Gwen blew out a breath that stirred curls slipping loose from a tightly woven plait. “And I don’t give a damn what they do, Arthur. Can’t you understand that? I would rather spend the rest of my life on the run,” she paused and swallowed hard, admitting something aloud that she’d never before dared, “with Leon at my side, than ever set foot on Odin V again.”

Behind her she heard Leon’s tightly indrawn breath. He said nothing, but his hand found hers again and he clutched at her fingers. She squeezed back almost desperately.

Arthur’s mouth opened and closed several times. She knew he searched for any argument he could make to fight against what he truly thought he could never have.

“But, Gwen,” he finally implored, “you’re to be my Queen. Isn’t… doesn’t that mean anything?”

Gwen smiled then, small and genuine. “Of course it does, Arthur. And had things been different, I’d have been honored to be your Queen. But you must know that I’d never have asked you to give up your heart, Arthur. I know to whom it truly belongs.”

“You belong with him, Arthur.” Leon said, quiet but firm. “And he needs you. And you know I’ll look after Gwen.” Gwen tutted so he hurried to add, “And she’ll look after me. You need to stay, Arthur. And you need to trust that we’ll find a way to come back for you.”

Arthur’s eyes locked on Gwen’s and he stared at her a long moment in silence. Gwen let her smile grow wider, and gave the barest nod.

That seemed to be all he needed. Arthur practically leapt towards her and took her up in his arms. “Thank you, Gwen,” he whispered into her ear, even as he nearly spun her about. “I… will never be able to thank… to tell you—“

“Hush, Arthur.” She said to interrupt his babbling, though kindly. “Just promise me you’ll take care of him.”

Arthur finally let her go and stepped back to look down on her again. “I will. And you as well. I’d have been proud to be your King and husband, Guinevere, I hope you know that.”

“And I’ve have been proud to be your wife and Queen, Arthur.”

He leaned in again and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. When he drew back it was to look past her to Leon. “ _Excalibur_ is already keyed to your biometrics, so you’ll have no problem boarding her.”

“I’ll take good care of your ship, Arthur.” Leon assured him.

“Good,” Arthur nodded gruffly. “I know you will.”

“And I’ll keep Gwen safe as well. You have my word on that.”

Again, Arthur gave that curt bob of his head.

Gwen looked from one to the other during their exchange and finally gave a mock-aggravated sigh. “Oh, go on and hug each other, already. We’re running out of time.”

Chagrinned, Arthur and Leon both stepped towards each other and embraced. She paced back a length to give them just a moment. They were the oldest of friends.   There were others in the High King’s Guard who were nearly brothers to the both of them – Gwaine, Percival, Lancelot, her own brother Elyan (who was going to have some harsh things to say when they met up outside the boundaries of the time bubble where their ship was waiting) – but Leon had been with Arthur from childhood. Much as neither would likely admit it, the thought that they might never see one another again had to be difficult.

When the mutual back-slapping and surreptitious sniffling was finally done, Leon moved to Gwen’s side and put a proprietary arm around her. Arthur nodded at that, and then gave a formal bow. “If I never see either of you again, know that you go with my love and pride and the truest bonds of friendship I’ll ever know.”

Gwen’s teeth found her lips again, biting them a moment as she sniffled to hold back the tears that threatened. “And our love goes with you and Merlin both, Arthur.”

When he turned away and sprinted up the steps, for a moment Gwen wanted nothing more than to follow – to see Merlin’s reaction to Arthur’s announcement that he’d be staying behind. Of course, knowing Merlin, he’d probably start arguing the point almost immediately (against his best interests).

As if he could read her mind, Leon said, “Let’s hurry. Goodness knows that Merlin will try to talk Arthur out of staying, so we’d better get to the ship before he’s got a chance to change his mind.”

Despite the ache in her heart Gwen couldn’t help the peal of laughter that rung out from her lips as she and Leon raced down the path towards the tele-pad that would take them to the Royal Shipyard where _Excalibur_ – and their future – waited.

 

~~~~~~~ Eight Solar-Years Later ~~~~~~~

“How the hell did they find us?” Gwen spat out frantically as she scrambled into the co-pilots seat and shifted impatiently to get the harness points synced up so that they could lock into her hastily-donned flight suit.

Leon made a snorting noise that was part frustration and part confusion but didn’t reply further. Not that she’d expected him to. He’d already suited up and locked into his command chair to interface with the ship to get _Excalibur_ ready to breach atmo while Gwen had secured the rest of the ship for flight (as best as she could manage in the few minutes she’d had – though the supplies they’d loaded earlier on Gedney Twelve were untethered in the cargo hold and were likely to get knocked about).

The one good thing about their emergency departure was that the men they’d spotted tracking them – no question about their intent - had to get back to their own ships. Even if they’d left crew aboard, and the ships idling, she’d seen no sign of Chancellory vessels during their rush back to the dock where _Excalibur_ was berthed. They had to have been waiting at one of the other docking bays. It might give Leon a few minutes head start off planet.

Although, the worst case scenario would be if the ships departed _without_ the two men who’d been trailing them through Gedney’s seedy marketplace…

“Dammit,” Leon cursed. “Two ships away from the leeward docks. Both of Odin make.”

Tapping commands into her console Gwen did her own cursing – silently berating herself for thinking ‘worst-case’, as if that somehow made it happen.

“Leon?” She asked softly, unsure if the thrumming she felt through her body was nerves or the ship as she began to vibrate through liftoff from the landing bay. Likely both.

He shot her a brief, fierce grin. “We’ve got this, Gwen.”

The sheer, slightly mad, confidence in his tone filled her with relief. “Weapons are online. I’m on sensors and shields.” She said by way of reply, to assure _him_ that she was just as ready to defend the ship as he was ready to fly it.

Suddenly warning klaxons began to sound and the lights dimmed as the ship responded automatically to being in weapon-lock. It had been some months since she’d last heard the bleating, blaring sound. Hearing it again, Gwen realized how complacent she’d grown.

“We’ve been targeted,” she stated, rather redundantly, though more out of disbelief than a need to state the obvious.

Leon grumbled. “They’re taking a risk, targeting while we’re still in atmo. If that gets identified by ground monitors—“

“They’re Chancellory ships, dear.” She reminded him. “They’ll get a slap on the wrist at best.   Now, if they fire on us, that’s a different story.”

There’d be an inquiry, at the very least, if their pursuers attempted to fire on them while planet-side. To say nothing of the fact that the local authorities – since Gedney Twelve was still part of the Albion Alliance – would launch their own patrols and possibly call in reinforcements.

Gwen kept an eye on her screens. The ship would warn her if it detected weapons dispersal of any kind, but still, she liked to keep an eye on things herself.   It also gave her something to do other than focus on the fact that they were essentially in a race with their enemy and she was helpless to do anything other than wait and watch.

Everything was in Leon’s hands for now.

The _Excalibur_ was faster than the Chancellory ships, but they’d had a head-start. Gwen watched the monitor as the little green _Excalibur_ -shaped icon trailed a line through a representation of the planet’s atmosphere, and close behind followed two smaller icons in red. They were within weapon’s range, and would likely fire upon them as soon as they were ‘legally’ far enough beyond the boundaries of the planet’s ionosphere.   But as Gwen watched, the little three-dimensional icons stayed relatively parallel to the surface of the planet.

She grinned after a moment, catching on. “You’re going to distance them in the sky before we hit space. Give us a good jump on them.”

“Yeah,” Leon said with a chuff of laughter. “It’s either going to piss them off enough to fire on us, which will cause them no end of headaches, or it’s going to give us enough of a lead that we’ll be out of weapons-range just when we’re all past the alert-zone.”

While over-long flights through a planet’s atmosphere were frowned upon, and might earn them a warning communique from any Albion Alliance patrols planet-side, it was still a much lesser evil than firing on another ship. Leon would have to time things well – didn’t want the local authorities getting in on the action – but he also needed to ensure they were distanced enough from their pursuers that his gamble would be successful to get them safely into space. At that point, Gwen knew, it would be solely up to Leon’s piloting skills to get them away far enough, fast enough, that they’d have time to make the fold into subspace.

“Few more minutes,” he followed-up with. “And in the meantime, maybe we can think about how the hell they found us here.”

She’d already had some thoughts forming about that. “It must’ve been Eira.” She looked over to Leon. “Do you think?”

Leon nodded briefly, his attention split between the conversation and his precision control of the throttle yolk. “It’s the only explanation I can come up with,” he said grimly. “She was the one who knew about the rendezvous with Gwaine here.”

Gwen didn’t want to consider that they’d been betrayed, but the more she thought on it, the more sense it made. The only people in their small cadre of confidants who knew about this meeting were Gwaine and Eira. And Gwen knew Gwaine would _never_ do anything that might see them harmed. She trusted him with everything and she knew Leon did as well. Eira was new and someone they’d only recently let into their circle.

Which had obviously been a mistake.

Gwen swore under her breath. “I should’ve known,” she muttered. “It was too convenient. Too obvious now that I look back on it. It wasn’t even the first time that the Chancellory has tried to get a mole close to us.”

Leon reached over to put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t go beating yourself up, Gwen. We were all duped.” He gave a quick, firm squeeze then returned his hands to the controls. “Poor Gwaine, though. He’s going to take this hard.”

She sighed. “Yes, he’s going to blame himself. Even though we were the ones who told him to bring her to that first meeting.”

“He’ll need warning. I don’t want him walking into the trap that was waiting for us. Think we can risk a coded message? With Chancellory ships this close, sending a message through local relays might get intercepted.”

“We’ll have to take that chance,” Gwen decided. “I’ll not let Gwaine end up in Odin’s clutches because of our mistake.” She typed out a brief, but carefully worded message and then ran it through their latest encryption protocol. “It’s ready,” she reported when the data packet was ready to transmit.

“Okay, hold on,” Leon cautioned, interrupting the conversation. “Atmo breach in about twenty-two seconds. Then we’re alert-zone clear another ten after that. Time the transmission right as we pass through the latter, and they’re likely to miss it in the influx of data from the monitoring satellites.”

Gwen held her breath and pinched the edge of her bottom lip between her teeth. Her eyes stayed glued to the display, and she couldn’t blink.   The grid-lined area behind the little moving ship icons changed color from a cool blue to white as they passed the alert-zone boundaries.

She triggered the transmission just at that moment, sending it – hopefully – to Gwaine’s ship, which was due to hit orbit in the next thirty minutes. Then she held her breath.

No further alarms sounded and nothing else – no blips or dots that might indicate missiles or ion cannon fire – appeared on her screen.  

They’d done it! Leon had timed his exit from the atmosphere just right, far enough ahead of the Chancellory ships that they couldn’t get a lock on _Excalibur_.

From there it was just a matter of out-maneuvering them, and Leon flew the sleek craft almost as well as Arthur had. Perhaps better now. The ship was almost an extension of Leon now, especially when he was interfaced through the biometric flight suit, and he guided her with an uncanny precision and skill.

Gwen sat back in her chair, no longer poised to activate weapons or reroute shields (though she kept a wary eye on the displays) and muttered to herself, still unsettled by the betrayal. It hadn’t been since the last time they’d heard the alarm klaxons that they’d felt this kind urgency and been made to fear discovery and capture.

She had to admit to herself that she’d grown lax and perhaps a bit too comfortable. They both had. It had started to feel as if the Chancellory of Odin had finally given up on tracking them down. Silly of her to think so, even eight years after she’d left orbit of Camelot at Leon’s side, in defiance of their contracts and betrothals. The Chancellory still considered her a threat – though to their reputation, rather than in any military sense - and still wanted to make her pay for what they perceived as her flagrant disrespect. They’d never stop chasing her.

Leon continued to put distance between them and their pursuers. They’d been in countless space-chases like this over the years. Chancellory ships, or hired mercs or bounty hunters on their payroll had all been on their tail, and every time _Excalibur_ proved the better ship and Leon the better pilot.

Not to mention that they’d also done some – not quite legal - modifications to _Excalibur’s_ engines recently and Gwen knew that once Leon put a good bit of distance between them, he’d shake the vessels tailing them off entirely by engaging one of those new mods. It was meant to give a brief speed-boost and at the same time send out a false ion-trail, which would allow them to do their sub-jump unobserved.

Knowing they were getting close to that opportunity, Gwen – who was a decent pilot in her own right (she’d had to learn, with essentially living aboard ship the last eight years) – turned her attention to the displays, ensuring the energy dispersion levels didn’t fluctuate outside the green. She called out a warning once, when Leon brought the ship just-on-the-edge-of-dangerously close to one of the Gedney system’s furthest planetoids at the far edge of the solar system.

“Proximity,” she warned, though with very little actual concern.

Leon knew what he was doing.

And sure enough, he skimmed the ship right through the rings circling in glittering arcs around the spheroid. The shields were more than capable of deflecting the buffeting of solar dust and ice particles.

To Gwen’s surprise, the Chancellory ships were still following, despite how far behind they’d fallen. She had to admire their doggedness, and how gamely they were trying to keep up; even copying some of Leon’s more bold and reckless maneuvers (like swinging through a planet’s rings to take advantage of its gravity field) to gain extra speed or cut the distance.

“There’ll be nothing they can do,” Leon said, reaching over again to give Gwen’s arm a squeeze – playful this time, “once we get past the markers and I can try out the booster mod, and then do a sub-fold.”

“I know,” Gwen agreed, touching her fingers to his wrist and the back of his hand. “I’m just surprised they’re still trying. It worries me. You don’t think they’ll be able to track our sub-jump do you? I’ve heard rumors that the technology has been developed.”

Leon scoffed. “I think that’s all they are, love, rumors. There have been no reports that anyone’s actually been able to track ships through a subspace fold. Especially as they won’t know our destination.”

Gwen nodded, though the edge of worry still niggled at her mind. Usually the Chancellory pursuers would’ve given up by now. Still, she listened to Leon and asked, “Speaking of; do you want me to input our destination cords? Or let the computer generate something random?”

He looked thoughtful a moment. And when he replied, it was clear he’d been thinking along the same lines she had. “You know, Gwen, we have no reason to think that the information we picked up from Deagal is false.   Despite the fact that Eira was clearly working for Odin, the contacts weren’t hers. Neither was the information that led us there. Deagal was Iseldir’s man on Gedney, no doubt. And information on tracking _him_ down came from leads that your brother and Percival were following. Eira only knew where we were going, not what information we were going after.”

She knew Leon was right. They’d gotten the tipoff about finding one of Iseldir’s men on Gedney well before Eira had joined them. Gwen’s reticence stemmed from the fact that this was the mission that Eira had chosen to betray them… and that small, lingering bit of ‘what if’ flavored doubt was still bitter on the back of her tongue.

Putting that aside, it stood to reason that the suggested area of space their contact had mentioned before they’d parted ways (Leon and Gwen with Chancellory men on their tail, Deagal, their contact, with a generously full credit chit) was their next logical destination.

Gwen started tapping at the controls, inputting the data into the computer system so it could extrapolate the best location for their sub-fold. They’d not been given exact coordinates, just a general region of space, but the computer would scrub its own databases for information on the area and plot the best point for them to drop back into normal space.

“You’re right,” Gwen said when she was finished. “I’ve given the computer the data. It’ll have a jump point for us in just a few moments.”

Leon made an affirming noise. “Soon as that’s ready and locked, I’ll engage the fold-drive.”

She chuckled, low but with genuine humor. “Though just in case the rumors are true about any new tech the Chancellory might have access to that could track us through a sub-jump, let’s still put those latest booster modifications to use, shall we?”

Leon’s answering grin made her giggle aloud. Of course he wanted to play around with the chance to push ridiculous amounts of speed out of the ship.

The computer chimed then, indicating it had locked in on its destination coordinates – somewhere deep in an area of space beyond the Fallen Kings nebula. Leon waited until they’d put the last of the Gedney system planets behind them according to the nav-system (folding into subspace too close to celestial bodies could sometimes put the ship at risk) before he looked over to Gwen and asked, “Ready for this?”

She nodded. “Go for it.”

Teeth-bared in a wild grin, and hands tight on the manual control yolk, Leon engaged the speed-boost.

Gwen felt the shudder through the ship as it activated and then the sensation of being pressed back into her seat. Even with inertial dampeners the surge made her stomach do a traitorous little flip, but it was oddly exhilarating at the same time.   Slightly breathless, she watched the monitor and was pleased to see how quickly the Chancellory ships were falling back. In a few moments they were off the screen entirely. She switched to a longer-range view and couldn’t help her slight sniff of surprise. “Wow.” The alarm klaxon, which had been sounding repetitively since they’d first been targeted, went silent, no longer registering the Chancellory ships as a threat.

Leon shot her a sidelong grin, still looking all wild-eyed and eager. His hair was a mussed tangle from where he’d obviously driven anxious fingers through it, and he sat perched forward in his seat, thighs straining, his hands firm on the controls. Gwen ignored the screen for a moment just to stare at him.

And suddenly the thrumming of her pulse and continued nervous flutter of her belly weren’t entirely due to the ship’s speed...

“Alright,” Leon said after a few minutes, albeit a bit reluctantly (it was a good thing the boosters weren’t fuel-friendly, otherwise she suspected they’d be flying around every quadrant of space at this break-neck pace), “I’m going to drop us down to normal speed and engage the sub-drive.”

She felt the deceleration, and then all around her the lights dimmed as the shipped prepped for the jump into subspace. On the view screen that dominated the front of the cabin the display of white-speckled blackness - the emptiness of normal space - changed with a dull flash to the whirling white-blue that signaled their shift.

Gwen watched as Leon docked the control yolk (unnecessary during the sub-fold) and then attended to the last bits of minutiae necessary during this portion of their journey. When he was finally done, he pushed the control chair back away from the flight console and then swiveled it to face her. His entire body seemed to collapse in a sprawl, which was especially challenging considering his suit was still docked to the chair. “We’ll be nine and a half hours approximately in this jump.”

Gwen nodded. “Why don’t we use some of the time to see what we can make of the data we risked our necks to procure.” She disconnected her suit from the command chair and peeled the top half down around her to waist, baring her sweat-soaked blouse and the damp neu-leather of her vest (the flight suits may have been convenient for improving reaction-times with the ships controls and monitoring their own biofeedback and even work for emergency EVA – but they could be hellishly warm). After a quick rummage through an inner pocket of the vest (at which Leon raised a particularly amused eyebrow) Gwen pulled out the crystalline data cube that had been handed over in exchange for a hefty amount of Alliance credits.

She held it out towards Leon. “We should probably get a head start on seeing if we can figure out what kind of information, if any, this thing contains.”

He nodded but made no move to take the cube. “You’re probably right.” His words were simple agreement, but there was a light in his eyes and a smile curving generously on his mouth, and Gwen knew what they both meant.

Her own smile grew to match his and the warmth she felt flood through her wasn’t only due to the heat-containing properties of the flight suit. That rush of adrenaline, the fear from barely evading capture, the building tension from the chase, had caught up to her as well. “Well, I suppose,” she said coyly, quirking her lips further, “we could use a bit of a breather after all that.”

Leon’s head bobbed eagerly, sending the damp blond curls framing his face dancing. He worked hastily at getting his suit disengaged from the chair.

“I mean,” Gwen went on teasingly, while he fumbled at connections that were normally made with ease, “we’ve got several hours before we drop back into normal space and I’m sure we could manage to find a way to keep…” She trailed off. Leon had gained his feet, closing the short distance between the two command chairs in a rushed step.

He hauled her bodily out of her chair, somehow managing to extricate her from the remaining confines of her suit at the same time (though she’d have to check for damage later, considering how she kicked and toed at the legs to get them off her feet).

“I think that sounds like a brilliant idea.” He agreed heatedly, hefting her up against him, getting an arm around her back and one under her rear as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

Gwen yelped playfully as she was hoisted up against him and then laughed into his neck, clinging tightly to him. She leaned back for a moment, angling to capture his mouth in a sensuous, heated kiss, and then drew away from it with a nip at Leon’s bottom lip. “C’mon,” she urged, burying her face against his cheek and neck, peppering them with light kisses, “let’s get somewhere more comfortable.”

Leon growled out his agreement and got moving. It was a bit of a clumsy march from the bridge back to the crew quarters like that, but they managed it, stumbling and laughing and kissing and crashing against bulkheads the whole way.

There was something about the heat of it all, the desperate spontaneity that reminded Gwen of the very first time they’d ever been together after she and Leon had left Camelot and Albion behind – locked out of time, lost to them seemingly forever.

Leon had been so courteous and respectful and had kept his distance at first; kept things mostly platonic. And Gwen hadn’t pushed. She knew he was conflicted, despite their strong feelings for each other they hadn’t allowed themselves - while still on Camelot and still in Arthur’s presence - to do much more than hold each other, and even the few kisses they’d shared had felt illicit and somewhat shameful. And that was _with_ Arthur’s awareness – even encouragement.

Leon was just too noble and too proud a Lieutenant of the Knight’s High Guard to betray his King that way, even when that very same King said it was no betrayal at all. And Gwen, even knowing that Arthur’s heart lay in a different direction, couldn’t bring herself to push Leon past those boundaries he’d set for himself; at least not then.

But then they were fugitives, and they’d spent those first few days and weeks hiding and on the run, barely staying ahead of the Chancellory ships and hired mercenaries and bounty hunters eager to collect the exorbitant rewards offered for her return. It had been a stressful time full of tension and anxiety and they’d hardly slept. And when they did manage some, it was only in shifts, trading turns at the controls and never getting more than a few moments together.

Until finally they’d found refuge on a small planetoid dangerously close to Odin’s system, albeit deliberately so in the ‘they would never be stupid enough to hide out here’ sense of things. They’d hidden _Excalibur_ deep in a series of massive ice caverns and run the ship on minimal power - just enough to keep life-support running and the ship from freezing.

There they’d finally gotten the chance to catch their breath and deal with the enormity of what they’d done and still had yet to face. Leon had been sitting at the small galley table opposite her, hot cups of the last of their strong Howden tea held in both their hands, and silence between them. Then Leon had pushed his mug aside, stood up and walked around the table; and she’d looked up at him, and held out a hand and he took it and drew her up and to him. Finally, he’d kissed her the way she knew he’d wanted to for all that time.

Much like this time, Leon had carried her to their quarters and set her gently on the lower bunk. Although, this time when he finally got them both in the room, he unwound her legs from his hips, managed to get her arms loose and then tossed her unceremoniously on the bed (they’d long ago given up the illusion of keeping stacked bunks, and had just pushed the upper and lower together in one end of the room). Gwen landed with a bounce and a grunt and then began to giggle almost helplessly.

“You primitive beast,” she accused, scooting herself further on the sheets and settling her head back on the pillows.

Leon mock-growled and bared his teeth. “What can I say; you bring it out in me.” He’d been smart enough to strip down to his undershirt and shorts before donning his flight suit, so while he hopped around trying to pull his socks off, stripping down the rest of the way took little more than a matter of moments.

Gwen rolled her eyes. “I think that speed-modification was what got you all hot and bothered.” She nodded toward the very firm evidence of such.

“Well,” he said somewhat speculatively, “you know I like things that go fast.” He put a knee on the bed and tugged her up so he could help with getting her out of her vest and blouse, and then got to work on her belt and the loose trousers she wore. She shifted and lifted her hips when he guided her to, but let him keep at undressing her.

After he dragged the trousers and underwear down past her feet and let them fall to the floor, he picked up her leg again and kissed her ankle.   Gwen continued to giggle as he trailed kisses up her calf and her shin and to the top of her knee and then slowly up the length of her thigh. When his teeth pressed into the point of her hip she squealed and kicked her feet lightly at his knees. “C’mon you! Get up here.” She dragged at his shoulders, manhandling him further onto the bed and atop her. “I’m still all sweaty from that damn suit.”

Leon ignored her, driving his scruffy chin past her hands where she playfully tried to push him away. Between the valley of her breasts he muttered into her skin, “You taste lovely, Gwen. All of you. No matter what.”

He was always like this when they were together: attentive, giving and generous no matter the mood. Whether it was explosive and passionate, or slow and tender, or sweet and playful – like now – or even rough and tumultuous (when they ended up taking out the strain of confinement and frustration of pursuit in one another’s skin), Leon always treated her with this same heady worship. Any part of her he could touch was fair game to his eyes and his lips and his trailing fingers and caressing hands.

It was something that Gwen, having long years earlier resigned herself to a marriage of political benefit (possibly loveless, but she’d been willing to trade the love for kindness at the very least), hand never expected to experience, and she was all the more grateful for it for that reason. She tried to make sure her attentions to him were equally devoted, though all too often he was entirely unselfish and she was more than content to let him bring them both pleasure.

Like now, when his lips tugged at a nipple and his fingers trailed up the insides of her thighs, teasing through the dark curls then gliding upward – instead of down, where she’d expected them to go. His fingertips traced over to one hip, bumped over her sensitive ribs, skated over the soft skin of her quivering belly, to curve around her other breast.  The touches were maddening and they got her pulse racing and her breath coming in a light, steady pant.

Two could play at that game though. She reached between them and wrapped a hand around the hot, hard length of him. He groaned delightfully into her breast, so she squeezed tighter and gave two slow, sliding pulls.

“You’re ruining all my plans,” he accused, smoothing his hand flat over her ribs and lifting his head up to gaze at her balefully.

Gwen laughed. “What plans?”

“These plans,” Leon replied, shifting above her and slotting their legs together so that his thigh pressed between the juncture of hers. He grinned rather wickedly when she couldn’t help but rub against him (he knew her far too well). “And these plans,” he added quickly, before dropping his mouth back to her breasts to kiss and nuzzle first one then the other.

“Well, that _is_ rather lovely,” Gwen hummed out. Her nipples were peaked almost painfully and every flick of his tongue or brush of his bearded chin made her whimper and gasp. Still, she managed a cheeky, “But it doesn’t seem all that organized to me.”

Leon groaned into her skin. “You’re impossible to please.”

Laughing again, Gwen squeezed her fingers and tugged rather suggestively on his erection. “Oh, I think I’m quite easy to please, darling. You’re just not putting certain things to the right use.”

Leon pulled his mouth away from her breast, which was slightly swollen from his attention and showed tiny red whisker-burn abrasions, to drop his forehead against her skin. “You are quite impossible.” He lifted his head and levered himself up slightly and the devilish grin was back. He took hold of both her arms, wincing when she was a bit reluctant to loose her grip on him, and then folded them out to her sides.

Gwen lifted an eyebrow at him. “Oh, it’s going to be like that, is it?”

“Oh yes,” Leon nodded. With her arms pinned he returned his attentions to her mouth, kissing her deeply and then drew back to trace his lips down the line of her neck and over the dip of her clavicle. She felt his lips trail nibbling kisses down her chest and to her belly.

When his tongue poked into her navel she squirmed and giggled and yanked her arms free, but he reached for her hands and pulled them away again, pressing them gently to the bed. “It’s all part of my plan, love. Trust me.” He assured her, mouthing the words against her hip. Gwen definitely wasn’t going to stop him if he was so determined, and she wriggled deeper into the sheets in anticipation.

Apparently trusting her to keep her hands to herself, Leon moved his hands to stroke up each leg, gliding up her thighs and pushing at them encouragingly. Gwen let her knees fall open probably a bit eagerly if Leon’s soft huff of laughter (warm against her skin) was any indication.

He explored slowly, teasing his way up her inner thigh until he barely reached the downy hair, then pulled away to do the same thing up the other leg. He pressed soft kisses and swirled little patterns with his lips and tongue, but it was all light and fleeting and not nearly enough. He waited until Gwen’s hips were shifting restlessly, canting towards him, before finally giving her what she wanted. It almost frustrated Gwen that he knew every touch to make her quiver and how every slide or thrust of his tongue could make her come apart.  

Every muscle in Gwen’s body began to ache with the building strain of it. She grasped at the sheets, fighting to keep her arms at her sides and not just give in to the urge to thread her fingers through his hair and grind herself against his firm tongue and strong chin.

“Leon,” she gasped out, both a plea and a command.

He finally moved to take the throbbing little nub of her clit between his lips and slid two thick fingers inside her. It was like a solar flare exploded inside her. Gwen nearly knocked Leon away with the force of her bucking hips, and she muffled her cries against her arm.

She slumped back into the bed, feeling the shuddering aftershocks track down her legs and through to her curling toes. “You make the best plans,” she purred out while Leon crawled back atop of her, pausing to wipe his face on the sheets, and settled into the cradle of her legs once again.

“I thought it was,” he agreed, somewhat breathlessly.

“And now for the rest?” Gwen asked, feeling his hard length pressing into her belly. She shifted against him, just to hear that low, rumbling groan again.

Leon made a face, like one confused. “What rest? That was pretty much all I had in mind.”

Gwen rolled her eyes, but it was easy enough to shift her body against his and get him positioned between her thighs. “Well I think you’re missing out, dear.”

“Oh.” Leon waggled his eyebrows and rocked his hips a fraction. “Well, this does seem to be a logical follow-up, doesn’t it?”

Instead of answering, Gwen wrapped her legs around his hips, and pulled her against him, drawing him inside with the strength of her thighs. She knew Leon was trying to hold back, but she clenched tight at his sides and wouldn’t let him pull away. Giving in, he slowly eased into her and let out a long, pleasurable groan when he finally buried his shaft up to the hilt. He stayed like that for a few seconds, poised inside of her, and she could feel the muscles of his back trembling beneath her calves with the effort to stay still. She held him close, tracing little patterns down the length of his spine while his breath steamed like a bellows into her neck.

Finally, when he seemed to have calmed enough to move, he began slowly, easing out almost entirely before sliding back in. She knew he wanted it to build up again, to take her with him to the precipice, but Gwen was already almost on the verge of coming again. She rocked up to meet his thrusts and twisted the fingers of one hand in his hair, pulling him into a kiss. It made him go wild when she kissed him after he went down on her, and she could feel him beginning to lose control.

Gwen felt the pleasure building as his rhythm escalated, and soon Leon was pounding into her with such force that they slid across the mattress. She matched him thrust for thrust and dug her nails into his back, and he fisted a hand into her hair.

She couldn’t bite down on the shout when she came again, and it burst out of her in a hoarse gasp. Leon’s release came a few moments later, and he rasped out her name with a low but equally impassioned groan.

They both slumped heavily into the bed then, Leon taking care to roll away from her (although as soon as he settled, she curled up against him, throwing a leg over his thighs). They were both panting and sweaty and she felt utterly sated.

“I think,” she began slowly, still catching her breath, “that we should follow all of your plans from now on.”

Leon rolled his head on the pillow to grin muzzily at her. “I had a feeling you might feel that way.” His eyelids were already starting to droop.

He had the right idea, she decided. Between the excitement of the chase and the exuberance of post-chase sex, she was exhausted. She called out a quick verbal command to the computer systems – a short nap couldn’t hurt – and then managed to pull a blanket over the two of them. Sleep followed quickly after that.

Gwen grumbled into Leon’s skin when the alarm she’d barely remembered to set before they’d dozed began to sound with its ultra-annoying bleat. Like every day since she’d changed the setting, she cursed ever having decided to deactivate the voice recognition function in the software, which prompted her (or Leon, if he could be wheedled with soft pleas) to have to get out of the bunk and cross the room to turn it off at the wall console.

She crawled over Leon, driving a pointy elbow not quite on purpose into his kidney, after he mumbled, “Your turn to get it.”

Getting out of bed had its desired effect though. By the time she’d padded across the room, tapped the comms to silence and retrieved her robe, she felt much more awake. “I’m going to get a quick shower and then I’ll get coffee on,” she told Leon, tossing his trousers towards the blanketed lump of him on the bed. “You go see how badly that run damaged our cargo and also see if you can find the crates with the fresh produce.” She dreaded the thought of another meal of rehydrated nutri-cubes. Bad enough they were the consistency of coagulated engine coolant, but they were down to the truly unappealing flavors.

She slipped on a pair of Leon’s boxers and grabbed a shirt and then sat back down on the edge of the bed. Leon hadn’t done much more than tug the blankets down around his waist, but he smiled up at her. “What’s on the agenda then?” he asked, still somewhat thick-voiced and slow-eyed.

“Well,” Gwen said after kissing him for looking so sleepy and appealing. “If you can find us some vegetables, I was thinking of using the rest of our synth-eggs to make us omelets, and then I’m going to work on seeing what information I can get off that data-cube.”

Leon surged up from the bed the few inches necessary to return her kiss. “You are an angel.”

Gwen slapped his bare belly. “C’mon, up you get.”

Groaning, Leon fell back to the bed. “You’re also a devil, you know that, love?”

She ignored him, except to smile brightly, and then headed back to the bridge to retrieve the data-cube.

A short while later, a freshly-scrubbed Leon poured her a second cup of coffee and then sat down to finish the rest of his breakfast (he’d found the produce crates and their omelets were full of freshly diced veggies) while Gwen dropped the data-cube into the reader slot and brought the files up on the small wall-screen. It seemed to be divided into two main directories, the first containing planetary data and the second some files of a type she wasn’t familiar with.

She flipped through screens, dragging some data over to her personal slate to examine in more detail. “What do you make of these?” she asked, opening up several of the planetary files on the wall display so Leon could see them too.

He studied them a moment and shook his head. “I’m guessing this is the output of someone’s ships-nav system back-up. Nothing new there, I’m afraid. Hell, we’ve been to half of those systems ourselves.”

It made sense to Gwen, based on what she was seeing. “There are more,” Gwen said, opening up still more files. “And several sub-directories. I think this merits a deeper look. I suspect there’s not going to be much in there, but it couldn’t hurt to look, right? Maybe whoever’s ship this was has been to Gedref’s world?”

“I’ll take care of that,” Leon offered. He lifted his chin towards the screen. “What about that other data? That format doesn’t look like something I’ve seen before.”

Gwen frowned. “I think it’s old. Maybe old vid format.” There was something familiar about the structure of the data, but nothing she could pinpoint off the top of her head.

“Something you’ve seen before?”

“I’m not sure,” Gwen answered, still staring at the screen. When she looked to Leon’s face she gave an impish smile. “Back when Elyan was still in his rebellious phase, before everything changed with my dad, he spent a few years working with a salvage crew in the wild-sectors.”

Leon raised a brow. “Dangerous work.”

“Yes, and I worried about him constantly.” She agreed with the air of aggrieved older-sibling. “Which is probably why we don’t much talk about it anymore. I was very angry at him for a long time.” She paused a moment, sighing, then forcefully shook off the less-than-pleasant memories. “But despite that, he’d sneak back to Odin now and again, and message me and we’d spend afternoons together going through some of his more interesting salvage finds. That’s how he learned so much about comm and nav systems and got so good at sneaking around in neural interfaces.”

She waved that away with a flick of her fingers. “Anyway, I remember he’d found some very old data storage units once. He told me they were probably old Albion, or Mercian and that they were from pre-neural computing days. No direct interface whatsoever. All manual coding. Those clunky media discs that weren’t able to hold a tenth of what data crystals can.”

She gestured to the odd data groups on the display. “This reminds me of those old vid compression formats. Elyan would know better.”

“It’s too bad Elyan isn’t here with us.” Leon sighed. “Do you think you can work with it? Figure out how to access them?”

Gwen shrugged and then said gamely, “I’m not sure, but I’ll give it a try.”

They spent the next couple of hours working in relative silence, breaking now and again to get each other more coffee, or check the status of the sub-fold and the ships systems or once – when Gwen cracked her neck and moaned just a little too loudly – for a brief shoulder massage.  

Eventually, Leon let his data pad fall to the table top with a loud ‘thwap’ and he rubbed wearily at his eyes.

“Anything?” Gwen asked, though she didn’t sound too hopeful.

“The only interesting thing I’ve come across is this.” He flicked a thumb at his data pad screen to move the output up to the wall-screen. “Whatever ship this data came from spent an awful lot of time in this area where we’re already headed, on the edge of the Cluster of Meredor. These particular coordinates are from a relatively dead region of space. I’ve checked out what we’ve got in _Excalibur’s_ databanks on the vicinity and it’s not much. Apparently this sector has been visited by mining drones and the occasional salvager ship, but it’s mostly asteroid debris and a few dead rocks not big enough to be called boulders.”

He tapped more at his slate, dragging fingers across the screen to enlarge a three-dimensional map of the spatial topography. “There’s a bit of an anomaly in the system, the way the gravitational pull from the sun is acting on the planetary bodies doesn’t compute, but that could just be a data blip. There’s nothing here, Gwen. At least no unknown planets. I hate to say it, but I think we’ve been chasing shadows again.” He frowned. It wasn’t the first time they’d been given false hope of even the most obscure lead.

Gwen sighed, but didn’t let that news bring her down too far. She wasn’t going to give up yet.

“I’ll keep working at it,” Leon said gamely. “I haven’t yet run the algorithms against our Gedref database. The computer can do the comparison and see if anything pings against our collection.”

Eight years on the run, and eight years chasing every hint and rumor and lead, no matter how miniscule, meant they’d gathered a ridiculous amount of information related to Gedref’s missing planet. They kept it all compiled in a special expanded memory drive on _Excalibur_ ’s central computer (and maintained several back-ups in secured location known only to them and the rest of the Knight’s High Guard).

Three years ago they’d even discovered a secretive cult, led by a man called Iseldir, who claimed its people were descended from the original population of Gedref’s world. These people, who came from various galaxies and seemingly unrelated star systems, had made it their life’s work to compile as much of the mythology and history of Gedref’s world that they could find. They were secretive about who they shared information with, but Leon and Gwen had eventually gained Iseldir’s trust (Gwen’s status of ‘Queen on the run’ from Odin’s Chancellory had helped to win him over – as seemingly everyone knew about Merlin’s Sacrifice, and the High King’s ), and that information sharing had led to a huge increase in the information they had on file.

It could take the computer some time to do the data scrub, but that’s why they’d collected the information in the first place.

Gwen patted the back of Leon’s hand. “Let’s not give up hope yet,” she told him, giving voice to her thought, albeit distractedly.

There was something about the files she still worked at trying to clean up that held her attention. It almost seemed as if instead of actually being the types of old vid files she’d suspected, they’d been reconfigured somehow. The problem was that they were either corrupt or just so ancient as to be nearly inaccessible. It was only because _Excalibur_ had better than top-of-the line computer systems, with beyond regulation retroactive compatibility, that it was actually able to interpret the data at all.

One thing that made being on the run from half the damn galaxy a little more bearable was that Arthur had meticulously planned ahead to ensure that keeping the ship well-stocked and in good working order wouldn’t be too difficult. (Of course, he’d been stocking it with the thought of going on the quest to find Gedref’s world without being hampered by a little thing like being the most wanted fugitive in half the known universe).

They were, at least, financially secure.

At some point Arthur had not only stored a plethora of un-traceable credit cubes aboard, and transferred funds into several off-planet accounts at a variety of major trade hubs that Odin’s Chancellory wouldn’t be able to track, but he’d also stashed material goods that could be bartered on some of the more disreputable back-water planets for goods and services. A few days out from Camelot Gwen had discovered a cache of cut flame-crystals and polished opaline shards and even delicately pressed bars of extremely rare and precious metals.

When she’d shown Leon the stash he’d only shaken his head and said fondly, “At least we probably won’t starve.”

With all that, they’d managed to keep _Excalibur_ ’s control systems, engines and main computer as state-of-the-art as possible. Some of the contacts they’d made through their fellows King’s High Guardmen and other sources were a bit on the less than savory side. Gwaine in particular had a bit of a wild and roguish background before coming to Camelot and being accepted into the Royal Knight’s service; he’d done some smuggling and even pirating (if his stories were to be believed). Those various resources – particularly the less than legal ones – had been invaluable in keeping _Excalibur_ up-to-date with the latest modifications and equipment. The compression encoding on their Gedref drive alone was experimental and not yet on the galactic market.

Still, the best systems in the world couldn’t make something out of nothing.

Leon refreshed their beverages – bringing her the light tea she preferred when the coffee got to be too much and started to make her jittery – and checked the status of their travel, reporting back that they were still two hours out from the end of their sub-fold. Which was exactly where they should be.

Gwen stretched her arms above her head, tugging at each hand in turn to pull some of the tension out of her shoulders. “Ugh,” she complained. “I’m getting a headache looking at these files.”

“Take a break?” Leon suggested. Then he amended (likely knowing Gwen would never agree to stop when she was this deep into an activity), “Or perhaps change focus? Why don’t I pull up the recording we took during our meeting with Deagal? Perhaps we can get some additional information from that?”

She nodded. Getting her eyes off the data that had been blurring into a massy jumble – even for only a few minutes – seemed like the best of ideas.

Leon accessed the file on _Excalibur_ ’s computer system where it had been automatically captured from the mini-cam on the collar of his flight-suit.

“I’ll be honest,” Gwen said, while Leon queued through the initial exchange of pleasantries and introductions they’d exchanged with Deagal. They’d had to provide proof that they were legitimately sent to meet with him, resulting in a peculiar conversation that included old Albion poetry, speculation on the financial markets in Mercia, and a discussion of the growing season on Othenden Prime.   They’d been coached on the lines to deliver and the responses to expect, and eventually they all accepted the other as trustworthy. “I really don’t recall much of the conversation,” she admitted. “I mean, the arrival of Chancellory guard kind of threw me a bit.” She chuckled wryly.

Leon nodded. “Yeah, same here. I think that it’s been so quiet lately, and we’ve been doing pretty well at laying false trails, ducking patrols, and staying out of sight, especially on these outer reach planets. I think I got a little sloppy—“

“You’re not the only one,” Gwen interrupted. “I should’ve been paying more attention as well. We both got complacent, I think.”

“That’s fair.” Leon agreed, amiably enough. Likely because he knew Gwen would fight him on it if he tried to shoulder too much of the blame or responsibility. “At any rate, there was the peculiar part of what Deagal said, at the end there, that seemed as if it was spoken in some kind of code.”

“I caught that too,” Gwen said, “but that’s also right about when I spotted that ore-dealer pointing in our direction and realized we were being tailed. We’ve got the file though, so let’s review it.”

They watched the replay of the discussion. At first they’d been given fairly straightforward answers to their questions and Deagal had provided the coordinates they were currently engaged in their sub-fold to reach.   He couldn’t tell them much about the area of space they were heading to, but then his entire manner of speech changed and the description he’d provided had an odd cadence and rhythm to it that suggested he was reciting it from memory.

It definitely hadn’t been just a normal bit of conversation (unless Deagal made a habit of speaking in an archaic rhyming verse). But the question then became: what purpose did it serve?

“Well,” Gwen said after they’d watched it a second time. “That doesn’t help much, does it?”

Leon sighed. “I honestly don’t know. What I’m really hoping is that the drive will have more information than what we got from that meeting. Deagal didn’t seem wholly sure what we could find on it, but seemed quite certain it would help.”

“Yes, I hope so,” Gwen agreed. “I’m sure there’s a reason he gave us these coordinates and sent us out here. I just hope it’s something we can suss out from the data. But, let’s pull the vid file into the database and set the system combing through it.”

“You think it was some kind of code then? That sing-songy bit before we got interrupted? Some kind of deliberate message we might be able to translate?”

She nodded. “There was something in his speech patterns. It reminded me of that recording we came across about,” she wrinkled her nose in thought, “oh, four years ago? Do you remember? From Balor Rim?”

“Right. That’s right,” Leon replied, face brightening with the recollection. “That whole recording seemed to be nothing more than the ramblings of some mad old prophet and yet it turned out it was actually just a very complex code he was speaking in.” He scratched at his beard. “I can’t remember the pattern though.”

Gwen frowned. “I can’t either, but we’ve got the file and the translation in the database. If it’s the same sort of pattern that we can apply to what Deagal was saying, maybe we can get more information.” She looked up at him briefly, “Can you get that started?”

Leon didn’t object but he did ask, “While you work on?” She couldn’t blame him asking – she’d wanted a distraction from the files after all – but something about the conversation got her thinking about those files in a different way. “I’m going back to trying to access these other files from the cube. I know there’s something I’m missing…” She trailed off, and didn’t notice when he got up from the table and left her to it.

Eventually, Gwen waved him over. “Come here, Leon. Look at this.” She slid her data pad over on the table and tapped at a graphical representation of the file she was reviewing. “It presented itself as one of those vid files I’ve been working on,” she explained, “but with some manipulation, and oddly, a recode to transmute it to an even older audio format, I got this.”

Leon leaned in closer. “What’s that then? It doesn’t look like the files you first pulled up on the cube.”

“It’s not, exactly,” She said, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. “Not any more. It’s only because of what we talked about earlier, about the coded message, not to mention I’ve spent so much time pouring over all the other data we’ve gathered on finding Gedref’s world that I was able to spot the pattern and figure out what’s going on here. That was the key. That part of Deagal’s message. It’s almost like a cipher, but using very specific information as the starting point.

“It’s oddly simple, but also effective because those file formats were so old. Most newer systems wouldn’t even hold the programing to read them, mostly because they hadn’t even been in use by the time data crystal tech became the norm. On top of that, they’ve been modified to the point that even if you had the capability to access them on the original tech, they’d likely report as corrupted or too degraded to read.

However, some of the data points in the actual code of the file led me to realize that we’re actually dealing with a mutated compression.”

Leon blinked at her. “And that means what when it’s at home?”

“Leon,” she said, pursing her lips in frustration.

He waved his hands mock-defensively. “Hey, you and your brother know the tech stuff. I just fly the ship.” The devilishly winsome grin that followed on the heels of his words was enough to keep her from giving into the urge to cuff him upside the head.

“Your cheek,” she muttered fondly. “You’re just lucky I love you so much.”

“I am,” Leon agreed, leaning in to press a kiss to her shoulder.

“Anyway,” Gwen pushed on, but she was smiling, “what that means, in the simplest terms, is that these files are disguised to look like they’re useless. But they’re really not. They just require a basic re-write to turn them into a format that we can use. It’s sneaky though, because just a simple formatting change would ruin them entirely.” She coughed and felt warmth in her throat and cheeks. “I may have tried that on a copy on an independent drive.”

“Wrecked it, did you?”

“Completely trashed it.” She agreed.

“At least you knew not to work on the original data.” He offered with a grin. “So, can you do this formatting change that won’t damage the files?”

Gwen nodded down at the data pad which showed a completing progress meter. “ _Excalibur_ ’s computer is already processing it. Should only be a few more minutes.” She took a sip of the half-filled mug in front of her and found it had gone cold.

“Sorry,” Leon said with an insouciant grin. “I got lax in my duties.”

She waved that away with a laugh. “Not to worry, dear. As long as you can tell me that it was worthwhile? Did you get anything from that message or from our files?”

“Actually, I did.” Leon showed her a textual recreation of Deagal’s message on the screen that had then been translated into several known languages. “This is what Deagal’s message looks like.” He brought up another screen. “And this is what comes out when using that same pattern we had in the databanks.” The various letters had been pared down to a remaining few. “And then this.” Leon tapped again and they reformed into a surprisingly coherent equation.

“That’s certainly interesting. But what do you think it means?” As with all the information they’d spent the last several hours poring over, the data on the screen seemed to scream out to her that it was significant.

Leon hefted his shoulders into a weary shrug. “I haven’t the faintest at the moment.”

“Well, let’s see what the output of vid files tells us,” she said, trying to sound encouraging. They had so many bits and pieces of new and interesting information, but it felt like they were looking at it from too close a perspective. Or perhaps not seeing all the pieces together.

She waited while the computer continued running, and when it alerted her to its completion, she studied the new output. They both watched as the results began to populate the screen. Instead of more code or the types of data files in the nav sat directories, the output was a multi-dimensional wave form.

“Oh!” Gwen blurted out, genuinely shocked by what came up on the screen. “It’s a frequency! A modulating frequency.”

Leon returned to his seat across from her and they both looked at the bulkhead display. “Holy shite, it _is_.” He angled his head to study it, bemused.

Gwen shook her head. “But by itself, I can’t see what that… Oh!” She said suddenly as a thought occurred to her.

“What is it?” Leon asked, but she shushed him with a raised finger.  She needed a minute to think about it. To see the bigger picture.

So,” Gwen said after a few long minutes, spreading her hands to take in the data tablets in front of them and the display on the bulkhead and even their empty tea mugs scattered on the tabletop, “what do we have here?” She brought her hands back to fold one over the other on the edge of the table and chewed pensively at her bottom lip. Leon said nothing, waiting patiently.

“I don’t want to seem over-eager,” she began again, eventually, hesitantly, “because that’s gotten us into some trouble in the past.” There were too many memories – especially in those early days when Camelot and Albion and Merlin and Arthur were a fresh, raw pain – when they’d gotten far too exuberant over a simple hint or clue or the simplest mention of anything relating to Gedref’s world.

They’d even celebrated a few of those early finds; until each time they followed up on their leads and were left with more questions than answers and no actual ending in sight, it got more and more obvious that this wasn’t going to be a quick win. They were in this for the long haul.

“I think,” Gwen went on, still with that same controlled care, the enthusiasm carefully tamped down, “that we actually have coordinates for a planet’s orbital path. And from the spatial data we’ve got from the drive, it’s in an area of space that shows no planet should exist. Those gravitational readings must be significant. What if it’s showing those fluctuations because there should be another planet in that empty space?”

Leon’s brows lifted.

She cocked her head to the side a moment and poked a finger at Leon’s data pad. “And from this, and the weirdly coded files on the drive, and then Deagal’s code speak, we have what appears to be a transmission with a very specific frequency identified.”

Eyes widening, Leon began to nod along with her, already jumping ahead to where she was leading.

“So,” she said, unable to keep the excitement under control anymore. “It all works together! All the pieces. The location of the planet’s orbit is that gravitational anomaly, and I’m thinking that if we go to these coordinates and we broadcast this message,” she pointed to the equation on one screen, “at this specific frequency,” she pointed to the other, “we may be able to somehow bring Gedref’s world into… visibility? Or access it somehow…?” She shrugged.

This was where things got a little strange, because if there was a planet hiding there in that blank space and emptiness, they had no idea how it was being obscured. It couldn’t be the same technology as the time-lock that Merlin had cast around Albion and both the Albion forces and the Mercian fleet, sending everything the temporal field encompassed into a shifted time-phase, because… well, that would defeat the whole purpose of the secrets of Gedref’s world being the only thing that could bring Albion out of the time-lock… But there was some strange force behind whatever it was that kept Gedref’s world hidden away.

“Do you think it’s regular tech? Rather than something that a techno-mage might need to be involved with?”

“I think there’s something there that will respond to this bit of data transmitted at this specific modulation frequency and will allow us access to Gedref’s world. How that’s going to work, I’m not entirely clear on.” But about the statement he sounded absolutely sure.

Which was somewhat upsetting because Gwen didn’t like it when the both of them felt sure about something. It was easier when one was skeptical while the other was confident. Because then at least, only one of them experienced the disappointment of being wrong and would have the other to offer reassurances (or, occasionally a very well-meaning ‘I told you so’).

In this case, they were betting everything on this. Granted it had been a long eight years of being hunted and chased and hiding away and sneaking and going to the ends of the universe to find the barest of clues and piecing them together and compiling every little scrap of information no matter how small. To say nothing of what they’d put their friends through. Friends who’d supported them, had never backed down from this crazy quest and never stopped believing in them or believing in what they all wanted to do, which was return Albion and Camelot to their proper time and bring Arthur and Merlin back to them – and to restore order to the known universe once more.

“So this is it?” Gwen let herself say, unable to keep the hope under wraps any longer.

“Could be,” Leon agreed, looking equally hesitant to name this a sure thing.

“Well, we’ll be out of the fold in just a little under half an hour. I suppose we’ll see then.” It felt so strange to say that. To think that the answers could be – might be – that close.

“Well,’ Leon echoed, “we both know it’s not going to be as easy as all that. Even if this broadcast thing does work.” Some of the skepticism was leaking back into his voice and Gwen was oddly pleased to hear it.

“Yes that’s very true.” She agreed. “I’m sure whatever happens we’re going to run into some hiccups. But it’s a start. It feels inevitable at this point.”

“It does.” He agreed. Then he stood up and slapped a palm on the table. “Alright, let’s get suited up and get prepped for dropping from the subfold. And…” He trailed off.

Gwen gestured to her tablet. “And I’ll get this transmission ready and we’ll go from there.”

With that plan made, they followed through. While Leon readied the ship (stowing their gear and powering down non-essentials), Gwen calibrated _Excalibur_ ’s external comms to allow them to broadcast at an above normal range, and readied the transmission with the frequency set.  

They returned to the bridge and got situated in their flight suits (Gwen using her backup because she _had_ managed to slightly damage one of the relays in the leg when she’d kicked it off earlier) and hooked back into the ship’s systems.

“We’ll be out of the fold in three-minutes,” Leon reported.   He counted off each minute, and then the last ten seconds. “Four…three… two… one.”

The view screen flashed from coruscating blue-white to a field a black.

“And we’re back in normal space.”

“Fantastic,” Gwen began, already pulling up the data on the gravitational anomaly to give them their next course setting.

The ship’s computer suddenly bleated out a warning sound.

Gwen looked up and over at Leon, who was frowning down at his controls. “Proximity?” She asked. Nothing had shown up on her screen when she’d started to review the data coming in, but dropping out of a sub-fold too close to a planet could sometimes happen. Especially if that planet was not known to the ship’s computers (as Gedref’s world wasn’t).

Leon growled out a sharp and vicious, “No. Not proximity. It’s another ship. They just dropped out of subspace about three astronomical units from us.”

“The ships from Gedney?” Gwen asked.

Leon shook his head sharply. “Single ship. Unknown make.”

“Alright,” Gwen cursed, “this is bullshit. How in the hell did they follow us?”

Leon was too busy doing his own swearing to answer.

“It just doesn’t’ make any sense,” she continued, speaking for both of them. “They’re not supposed to be able to track us through a fold. Our data extrapolation was random. We didn’t base it on coordinates they could’ve copy-catted, just a sector of space. The odds that they’d drop out of a fold that close…”

“I don’t know,” Leon finally shot back, clearly frustrated and furious in equal parts. “They didn’t piggy-back our fold, since it’s not the ships that caught us on Gedney Twelve. Plus, they didn’t drop out in the same area as us, but they’re close enough that it makes no difference. There’s just no way they should’ve been able to do that without having our data. I mean, I’d heard rumors that the tech was being developed for subspace tracking.” He shrugged helplessly, lifting his hands off the controls for just a moment. “Maybe they’re further along with it than we realized.”

Gwen could only mirror the shrug. “Maybe. But still, this is just…” She wanted to slam a hand on the console in frustration but refrained; taking it out on the ship was never good for anyone. “How far are they?” she asked, just to give Leon something to answer because he was looking just as keyed-up as she felt.

“A couple clicks out of actual threat range. Bu they’re closing. They’re closing in rather fast. I’m also not recognizing the make of the ship.”

“How do we know it’s Chancellory then?”

“Well, I don’t exactly,” Leon admitted after a moment. “But who the hell else would be out here? They popped out of sub just after we did. Either they were following our fold somehow, or this is just the most fucked up coincidence in the history of the universe.” He shot her a wry look. “I’m definitely leaning towards the former.”

Gwen sighed. “You’re probably right. Though,” she paused to reach across the space to slap at his shoulder, “it’s no call to be such a git.”

He ducked away from the blow, but was grinning apologetically.

She settled back into her seat, fixing one of the suit-linked feedback straps that had twisted with the movement. “So, we’ve not only got new technology that’s going to make our getaways hell from here on out, but we’ve got a new ship as well. I’m guessing that the damn Chancellory has their own damn database put together all about us. They probably know what the _Excalibur_ is capable of. I mean, I’ve always wondered why they keep sending those standard issue Odin-make ships out after us when we evade them every time.”

Leon chuckled. “I’ve always questioned that myself. I just assumed they were stupid. Well that and they were throwing ridiculous amounts of currency and resources at finding us. They probably thought that would be enough. Not to mention the bounties to draw in every amateur hunter and merc squad in every quadrant. Hell, it’s been eight years and at the last station I checked the reward was up again. It’s a wonder we’ve not been picked off by someone else.”

“Well,” Gwen capitulated, “I often think that Odin’s Chancellory just doesn’t understand that there are people who are willing to support the right cause, promises of riches be damned. We’ve been helped as much as we’ve been chased.”

“True,” Leon agreed. “It can’t be pleasant for them that we’ve managed to convert quite a few to our cause.”

“Plus, the Chancellory hasn’t been too popular throughout the Albion Alliance since some of that data got leaked that they’d been covertly funding the Mercian Confederation well before the war started.”

“Yeah, that’s really changed a lot of minds. That’s what I attribute to the fact that we haven’t seen nearly as much traffic chasing us these last few months. I think the Chancellory’s been too busy trying to cover up as much of that as they can and salvage their reputation with the remaining Albion Alliance to worry about nobodies like us.”

Gwen rolled her eyes but she laughed. “Yes, I’m sure that whole debacle changed more than a few minds, but there are still folks out there who are in it for the quick bit of coin. Do you think that’s what we’re dealing with now? Not Chancellory personnel, but bounty hunters?”

The light-hearted banter they’d had going back and forth was a familiar distraction to pass the time while they waited for the unknown ship to near, and she hated to put it aside, but Gwen knew they needed to focus.

“Well, we’ll know soon enough.” Leon gestured to the main view screen. “Because I’m letting her get close.”

Gwen didn’t sigh, but she wanted to. It was what she’d suspected when _Excalibur_ didn’t seem to be at top speed. “And I suppose you’ve got a good reason for that?” she asked archly. She trusted him entirely, but sometimes she wondered at his decisions.

“At this point our option is to stay and fight or jump into another fold, which is I’m sure what they expect us to do. And that would waste more damn time and energy to get back here, and we’d probably find this whole damn sector swarming with Chancellory ships.” They’d seen it before: a massive increase in activity and interest in the places they’d recently been.

“ _Can_ we stay and fight?” Gwen asked, genuinely concerned.

“I don’t know.” Leon answered honestly. “I like to think so. _Excalibur_ was the pride of Albion’s fleet. She’s one of the best ships ever constructed. I’d put her up against any ship from any of the known worlds for speed, maneuverability, and defense. But, like I said, this one’s new. It’s got good speed. I think that in a chase, we might not lose her. At least not get the distance we’d need to manage to jump to a subfold without taking fire.

“But,” he lifted a hand from the control stick, one finger waggling in the air demonstratively, “we do still have a few tricks up our sleeve and hopefully these guys are operating on whatever specs they’ve got from the _Excalibur_ of a few months ago. They likely don’t know about many of our recent modifications; the improvements to the weapons systems, the engine overhaul, all of it.

“Well,” Gwen corrected, “they do now know about our little speed-boost trick from our getaway a few hours ago.”

“Alright, I’ll give you that.” Leon agreed mock-reluctantly. “But unless we’ve had some of our dealers selling secrets, which we pay them well enough not to, I‘d like to think we have enough proverbial weapons in our arsenal to manage against one ship. But I promise,” he turned to face her earnestly, “if we get a weapons lock and can scan her once she’s close enough, and the data shows it might be too close of a match, then I’ll find a way to pull us out and jump us back into sub.”

“That’s fair.” Gwen nodded, feeling slightly relieved. Leon wasn’t so ego-driven that he wouldn’t turn and run if the situation called for it, no matter how much it rankled. “Do you want me ready on weapons?” She was already prepped – weapons, shields and several other subsystems were all accessible on her console – but she’d take Leon’s instruction on where to focus first.

“Shields for the moment,” he instructed. “I’m sort of thinking…” he went on hesitantly.

Gwen groaned. “You’re gonna _let_ her in close enough to get a weapons lock, aren’t you? Let her fire on us.”

“Well,” Leon admitted sheepishly, “that’s sort of the plan. Just keep shield strength up where we’re primarily targeted.”

“I can do that.” She adjusted the display slightly, dragging the shield controls to her right – and faster – hand position.

“But have weapons on secondary.”

Gwen was already ahead of him. She had left-hand console access to the weapons grid (same as Leon did), but could toggle her right-hand controls to weapons and vice-versa with a flick of her thumb if she needed the faster access.

“They’ll be within range in two minutes,” Leon reported.

Gwen blew out a breath, reached a quick hand up to smooth down a few flyaway curls tickling at her sweat-damp forehead and then settled her hands in position.

“One minute.”

Silently counting down (even though both the ship and Leon were doing it with her), Gwen still startled when the alert sounded.

“Weapons lock.” Leon echoed the ship’s announcement.

He maneuvered the ship with no little skill, making it look quite like they were trying to dodge and shake off their pursuer.

“Should we try and contact them? Play up that we don’t know who they are or why they’ve got a weapons lock?” Gwen suggested.

“Good idea. Send the general script for peaceful contact between Albion Alliance members.”

Gwen transmitted the standard message. Included with a plea for a cease of hostilities was notification of their affiliation with the alliance and that they were a simple trade ship.

“No reply.”

Leon grunted. “Didn’t think we’d get one. They’re the lock-weapons first, ask questions later type for certain.”

“Definitely Chancellory, even if she’s not running their marks on her hull.” She’d gotten enough from scans with the _Excalibur_ ’s sensors to glean that much.

“Okay,” Leon warned, “brace yourself and be ready on those shields. I’m going to let her get that first shot off.”

Ignoring the warning bleat that signaled the approaching weapons fire, Gwen slid her fingers over the panel, redirecting power from their bow and amidships to the portside. The enemy ship was coming up on them from slightly below, and the display showed they were going to take the hit aft, on _Excalibur_ ’s stern and port quarter.   She knew Leon had positioned that part of the ship to be vulnerable since it only risked the cargo holds.

“Impact in three… two… one!”

The ship rocked with it and Gwen nearly jerked forward in her seat. Only the straps linked into her suit kept her steady, and even those pressed taut into her shoulders. She’d be lucky if she didn’t bruise.

“Gwen?” Leon called out, voice raised above the droning of the alert klaxon. “What’s the damage?”

Her eyes were already taking in the data _Excalibur_ reported back. “Minimal,” she replied quickly, but with relief. “Shields managed to deflect successfully. They’re still holding firm, though we’ll start seeing power fluctuations if we sustain any more hits like that.” A ridiculous giggle slipped past her lips. “Cargo hold is likely a mess again.”

Leon snorted, and there was a matching amusement in it.

“Did you get what you needed from that?” She asked.

“I did.” Leon confirmed. “She may be faster than the Chancellory ships we’re used to, but she’s also running similar weapons. That was a pulse-plasma shot.   She’s also got torp launchers and some plasma cannons, though I’m not going to let her close enough to use those.”

“So this is a stay and fight situation?”

“It is.” Leon replied grimly. “We’re capable of taking her out. Hopefully we can convince her to turn-tail and run.” They didn’t often engage in combat, relying instead on their speed and stealth to get them out of conflict. Neither of them wanted to fight, but they would when cornered.

Gwen’s teeth pressed into her lips but she nodded. Then aloud, so Leon could hear, she said, “I’m ready on weapons. Just let me know where I should focus my targets.”

Leon was too hard-pressed to answer, using every trick in his vast arsenal to break away from the other ship and turn the table on them. The enemy ship fired twice more; the first a missile shot that was aimed hastily and neatly deflected off the edge of their shields, and the second another blast of the pulse plasma-guns, which impacted them amidships starboard, but was also mostly repelled.

Eventually Leon panted out, “I’m cutting down, dropping into a quick reverse and going to loop around those asteroids, and get up behind her. She’s not as maneuverable in short bursts as we are, and that’ll give me the advantage. Be ready to target her on those aft drive pods. If we can disable her, all the better.”

Gwen tapped at her console, prepping the targeting system.  

“On my signal.”

She waited, keeping her eyes on her displays and not on the main view screen where the glitter of distant stars on the black of space was currently a wild spiraling of lights from the motion of Leon’s maneuvers. Her stomach flipped, but she swallowed against it. Gwen knew it wasn’t actual motion making her queasy, but the idea of it, and she did her best to ignore it.

“Fire!” Leon barked out.

Gwen tapped at the button that sent a small barrage of deadly missiles towards the other ship. She tracked their progress on the display and reported, “Impact,” when they hit. “She’s got shields up, but I think we may have gotten through on one.”

Data flashed over her display almost faster than she could read it. “Confirmed!” she crowed. “They didn’t redirect fast enough. They’ve got damage on their port side drive pod.”

“Fantastic, Gwen!”

It hadn’t been enough to disable them though, and the dogfight through the debris-strewn sector of space continued.   It was touch-and-go for a time. Leon’s careful positioning ended up compromised because of a collision alert. He wanted to ignore it – a small tumbling space rock that would like destroy itself on impact – but Gwen challenged him that they were already starting to lose some shield integrity.

The enemy ship got a few more shots off at them, once getting in range to bring their ion cannon into play. That brought a section of their starboard bow shields into the red.

Eventually though, Leon’s experience and familiarity with his ship got him in control of the fight once again.

“One more hit should bring down the shields over her propulsors. Let’s see if we can get that on this go ’round!”

It did. Gwen fired their own close-range ion rail guns when Leon took _Excalibur_ in a truly crazy spin that nearly sent them colliding into the other ship, before drawing hard on the yolk and getting her to neatly curl over the other vessel.

“That’s done it!”

Gwen watched on her display as the enemy ship started to turn to follow, but couldn’t bring itself out of a lurching sort of spin and roll.

Leon let out a whoop of triumph. “Alright, let’s bring her around again and see that bastard fully dis—“

He broke off abruptly as the sensors pinged with the sound of another ship dropping from subspace in range.

“Oh bloody hell!” Leon cursed.

Gwen tapped frantically at her controls. “I’ve got them.” She swore, under her breath and then aloud. “Dammit, Leon. You’re not going to… It’s the two Chancellory ships from Gedney Twelve.”

“Fuck!” Leon yanked the controls in a hard turn. “Dammit, Gwen, we’re going to have to run this one out. They’re too close. I can’t stay and fight them both when we’ve not had a chance to finish off the first one.”

But even as he said it, Gwen could hear it in his voice: Leon didn’t want to turn-tail and escape to the safety of a subspace fold.

“No,” she told him, sparing a second to face him fully.

He met her eyes. “We won’t get another chance, Leon. You said it before, once we fold out of here, they’ll be all over this sector. Wondering what the hell we’re doing here. We’re not going to be able to get back.”

Leon’s expression couldn’t have been more torn. She knew he wanted to agree to stay and fight, but she also knew he wanted to keep her safe.

“Gwen—“

She turned abruptly away from him, locking her eyes on her displays once more. “What’s the status, Leon? What do we need to do?”

From the corner of her eye she saw Leon hesitate – still staring at her with wide eye and a gaping mouth – then his head whipped forward and he started spitting out instructions. “Get the missiles ready to lock onto that first ship, the one coming in from our starboard. It’s closer and will be in range sooner. I’m going to lead them both away from the disabled ship so we can take her guns out of the equation. Let’s just hope the damn first ship can’t recover her engines fast enough to get involved again, at least until we’re done with these two.”

It was half-bravado, Gwen knew that, but she still took heart from it. She followed his instructions, heart pounding hard against her breast and panting breaths drying her throat.

They managed, for many long minutes, to play a wicked game of cat and mouse with the two new Chancellory ships. Leon’s erratic flying kept them from getting any successful weapons lock on _Excalibur_ and put them at risk of friendly fire more than once. Gwen took pot-shots where she could, doing little damage, but enough to keep them from managing any kind of dual-front attack.

And to their enormous luck, so far, the third ship hadn’t managed to follow as Leon teased the others further and further away from its superior weapons capability.

Gwen was just starting to think that they might actually live through this, might survive, when the sensors pinged for a third time, signaling yet another ship dropping from subspace in their vicinity.

“Oh, now what?” Leon cried out, sounding almost amused by the latest development.

“I’ve got another ship—“ Gwen started to report, when suddenly the furthest of the two Chancellory ships exploded in a flash of red-pulse cannon fire.

“Holy shit!”

The words were barely off Leon’s tongue when Gwen’s comm panel activated.

“ _Excalibur_ , this is the _Green Knight_.”

“Gwaine!” Gwen exclaimed, feeling tears well up uncontrollably.

“Aye. Thought you lot might need a hand.”

Leon spluttered, “But how… Why are you here? How did you even know to find us?” Even as he asked, he and Gwaine (or whoever was piloting) dropped into familiar flight patterns, flanking the remaining Chancellory ship.

They made short work of it between the pair of them, and then Leon led them back to the original ship, which was still attempting to limp after them.

“It’s a long story.” That was Percival’s voice over the comms. “But suffice to say, we’re aware of Eira’s true allegiance.”

Gwen winced, knowing why it was Percival who answered that question. “Did you get our message?” she asked.

“No. Well, yes, eventually,” Percival corrected, “but we cottoned on to the situation a bit sooner than probably expected. You see, Eira started to put up a big fuss when we told her that I was coming with the two of them. You won’t believe it, but she actually thought she’d be able to convince Gwaine to turn on you both, once she got you captured by the Chancellory.”

She and Leon exchanged a look at that. Eira had obviously thought quite highly of herself and clearly didn’t know Gwaine as well as she thought she did.

“So that naturally,” Percival went on, “got us both pretty suspicious. And then when we suggested holding off on the rendezvous, that's when she really started to panic. Well, we knew the game was up then. And under some duress, she admitted it. So we left her back on Ealdor with Lancelot and Elyan and headed to meet up with you ourselves. We got there just after some dustup with a few Chancellory ships apparently going balls out in atmo chasing after another ship. Albion officials weren’t too thrilled, that's for sure.”

“Wouldn’t know anything about that,” Leon said with a smirk.

“Yeah, I’m sure you wouldn’t. Didn’t sound like your kind of antics at all.”

Leon made a snorting sort of noise. “Well then how in the blue hell did you manage to find us out here? And for another thing, do you have any idea how they managed to track us as well? Hang on,” Leon interrupted his own questions to say, “we're coming up on the third ship. Gwaine what are your sensors telling you? I'm showing that she's down to half-power. But I wouldn't put it past this one to play at disabled.”

“I can confirm I'm getting the same readings as you,” Gwaine replied. “What do you want to do with her?”

Leon thought about that for a moment and then he looked over at Gwen. She flashed a weary but genuine smile.

“Let's leave this one to her own troubles. Fire another few pinpoint shots to disable her completely. Target her communications array and engines. By the time she's able to get a message out or likely get repairs made enough to go any distance, we'll be done here.”

They’d already destroyed two of the smaller Chancellory ships. Minimally they ran three-manned. That was enough death on Gwen’s conscious for a good long while. She could live with letting the last ship go. She stayed silent while the _Excalibur_ and _Green Knight_ both moved into position and she confirmed the target locks before firing.

The enemy vessel didn’t have the maneuvering capability to avoid any of the fire she was taking, but she did try to retaliate at the _Green Knight_ , firing their plasma canon. Gwaine reported that their shields deflected the damage. On the view screen, the enemy ship’s hull buckled with each detonation and canon blast, until the scuffed silver ship seemed to hang lifeless in space.

“Confirmed, she’s dead in the water.” Gwaine reported after both ships peeled away.

“Nicely done!”

“So, you found something did you?” Percival asked, picking up on Leon’s earlier statement, and Gwen was glad of the distraction.

“Yes we have,” Leon agreed. “But I'll get to that once you answer _my_ questions.”

Percival’s loud braying laugh echoed into the ship. “Alright, fair enough. I suppose I should give you those answers. So, what you probably didn't know is that this ship we just put down was waiting for you on the outer rim of the Gedney system.”

“What do you mean,” Gwen asked.

“I mean that Eira told them that your go-to maneuver was to get just to the edge of the system before you did your sub-jump. So they positioned their newest ship in an ideal location, kept off obvious radar by hiding unpowered near Gedney Thirteen’s twin moons. And then those two Chancellory vessels that chased you off planet were meant to guide you in the same general direction as this waiting ship.”

“That still doesn't explain how they tracked our fold,” Leon broke in.

“Hang on a minute,” Percival shot back in mock irritation, “I'm getting to that part. Well, it turns out that the rumors about being able to track a sub-fold are somewhat true. If they're close enough to you when you jump. This new tracking system somehow can detect where your fold is taking you. It reads the output from your computer that triggers the subspace event when you’re pulled into the fold.”

Leon and Gwen exchanged a look. “At least we understand how they followed us.” Gwen said softly.

“So that first ship got a vague bead on your end-point. Once they had that they must've transmitted it back to those other two ships and then folded into sub right after you.”

“Okay, this is all starting to make sense now.” Gwen said with amusement. “But it still doesn't explain how you guys found us as well.”

“Yeah, we weren't able to track the ships the same way. Eira told us about the new tracking tech, but she didn't have access to it, nor did she know how to make it work. Instead, we did things the old-fashioned way. We tracked down your contact and talked him into giving us the data as to where you were.”

Gwaine picked up the thread of the explanation. “So that's why we're a little late. We had to track down Iseldir's man, and then we had to deal with everything else to get him to believe we weren't part of the group hunting you down.” He sniffed irritably. “Took him long enough. But once we had the coordinates that he provided you, it was just a matter of trolling through the database and letting the ship do some calculations regarding where you’d have likely folded to.”

“Well your timing couldn't have been better,” Leon replied laughing. “And it's very good to have an answer to the question of how they managed to follow us out here. If they need close proximity to be able to scan our output then it's not as big threat as I feared, which is good.”

“Alright, we’ve given you our report. Now it’s your turn to share. What’ve you found?”

Leon smiled at Gwen. “Why don’t I let you field that, dear?”

So Gwen did as asked.   While they continued on to the coordinates that Leon had extrapolated from the datacube, she filled the others in on what they found. Leon added his own input now and then, but for the most part she was able to share the details with little interruption.   
  
“So once we get there,” Gwen concluded, “Leon and I will take _Excalibur_ in close and run the broadcast. Gwaine, you keep your ship at a safe distance because we don't know how this is going to work. Plus that way you can patrol for other Chancellory ships that might show up. We don't know how many others they might have transmitted our sub-fold location to. So we’ve got to hurry.”  
  
“You can count on me,” Gwaine replied, “oh ‘Queen of the Rebellion’.”  
  
Leon blurted out a chuckle but covered up quickly, and then turned it into a very disbelieving cough.

Gwen shot him a dirty look. She said somewhat snidely. “Is that what they're calling me now?”  
  
“Well,” Percival said - and from the rustling sounds coming over the comms it was clear that he was elbowing or jostling Gwaine, “They're calling all of us the Queen's rebellion now.”  
  
Gwen laughed softly. “I suppose that's better than some of the other names they've given us over the years. Though I quite like Albion's Avengers. Or the Camelot Crusaders.”  
  
It took them just over another hour to get to the coordinates, and they spent that time catching up and sharing news on not only Gedref’s world, but everything else their members had been up to since the last time they’d all been together on the small moon of Ealdor that they called their home.   
  
Gwen and Leon were careful not to mention Eira too often, though there was a sharpness and underlying bitterness to Gwaine’s speech that told them he hadn't quite dealt with the situation yet. And there was still more to be considered, as she was still held back on Ealdor, awaiting judgment.  
  
Eventually they reached the proper location and Gwaine kept the _Green Knight_ just on the proximity of the small solar system. There were two planets orbiting a weak yellow dwarf, and where the third planet seemed like it should've been was a blank area of space occupied by little more than an asteroid field. Two more medium-sized gas giants orbited the small sun much further out. This was where the gravimetrical anomaly suggested that there was something ‘missing’, That the gravity affecting the furthest two planets didn’t make sense if there wasn’t any other celestial body between them and the star.  
  
“Are we ready for this?” Leon asked, once he'd gotten the ship in position. He set her flight path to following a rudimentary orbit; the strange gravitational readings in the area seemed to provide a vague path to follow.  
  
“All set,” Gwen replied. She tapped at her screen and then said, “I'm beginning the broadcast.”  
  
Nothing happened right away, or even in the first several minutes, but they had the entirety of the system to traverse. Gedref’s world could've been anywhere along its orbital axis.

Gwen wasn't going to lose hope.  
  
When they were over an hour into broadcasting the same message at its prescribed frequency, Gwen’s early excitement had rapidly diminished. She was just starting to tell Leon that perhaps they should meet up with Gwaine and the others again to go over the data when the proximity sensors sounded.  
  
“I'm getting something,” Leon told her. “Weird readings,” he went on, half distracted because the ship started to shake slightly.  
  
“I think it's working!” Gwen cried out.  
  
“Something’s working alright,” Leon shot back just as anxiously. “Getting very strange gravimetric readings.”  
  
Suddenly there was a planet on their view screen.

It took up most of the view and Leon had to fight with _Excalibur_ to keep her from getting too close to the planet’s atmosphere.  
  
“Oh! Oh my…” Gwen exalted breathily. “This is Gedref’s world.” She turned to Leon, her eyes already prickling with moisture. “We found it… Leon, we actually found it.”

Leon reached over and took a tight grip of her hand, lacing their fingers together in solidarity like he had all those years ago in the Council Chamber when they first planned this mad journey. “We did.” He replied, voice soft but no less awed.

They stared at the green-blue swirls of the planet just waiting there for them for many long, silent minutes.

“Well,” Gwen said slowly, breaking the heavy, almost reverent, silence that had fallen. “Now the real work begins.” She looked at Leon and he looked back to her, and they both began to laugh.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~ Approx. Two Solar-Years Later ~~~~~~~~~~

Six ships hung motionless in space.

Another five were lined up behind the sixth, in a neat formation.

In the cockpit of the sixth ship a woman, known throughout the universe by many names, but most often ‘Camelot’s Queen’ (which wasn’t quite accurate, as she’d never actually wed Camelot’s King and in fact it was escaping that destiny which made her the figurehead that she’d become) stood at the side of the King’s Knight High Lieutenant (also frequently dubbed ‘The Queen’s Champion’) and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m nervous.” Gwen whispered, pitching her voice low enough that the open comms channels wouldn’t likely be able to pick it up.

Leon reached a hand up to curl his fingers over hers. “I think we’re all bloody nervous,” he hissed back.

“Better part of ten years,” Gwaine’s voice came over the comms (which were clearly more sensitive to noise than she gave them credit for). “I think we’ve all a right to be bloody nervous.”

The mingled laughter of several dozen voices echoed throughout the ship. “Well,” Gwen said, directing her words to all those listening on the other ships. “I think we’re all agreed that we’re rightfully nervous.” She chuckled even as her stomach flipped like she was floating in zero gravity. Speeches had never been her strong suit. “But, this is the moment we’ve been working towards since that day nearly ten years ago when Merlin willingly did what was needed and sacrificed himself to save Camelot, and all of Albion and well, hell… the entirety of the Albion Alliance. When he risked his life and freedom to activate the orb and lock this whole star system along with the Mercian Armada out of time, he knew that rescue would be nearly impossible. Yet he did it anyway. And then our brave and wise King chose to stay with him, unwilling to abandon a friend so steadfast and loyal, and unwilling to let him suffer alone.”

“With some convincing,” Leon mouthed softly in an aside to Gwen. Gwen wrinkled her nose in agreement.

“We cannot even truly be sure if Arthur and Merlin are even alive.” Gwen spoke the words out of realism not belief; she _knew_ in her heart they had to be. “Although the fact that we’re looking at empty space suggests Merlin’s plan was successful. And if it was, we now have a chance to perhaps bring Camelot and the whole of Albion back into our time, or at the very least, rescue our friends.

“When we all set out from this place unwilling to abandon a friend so steadfast and loyal, and unwilling to let him suffer alone, we knew we’d have so many obstacles to face and so many challenges to overcome.   Gedref’s hidden planet had been nothing more than myth for hundreds of years. And yet, despite the impossibility of it all, we managed. You all supported me,” she smiled at Leon and corrected, “us, and have all been the most wonderful family anyone could ask for. And now, if all goes well, we’ll be able to make that family whole once again.”

Gwen bit at her lip when silence followed her speech. She was about to stumble on with more words, something perhaps a bit less clumsy, when the comms once again erupted with noise. This time it was whistling and whooping and raucous cheers. She dashed at the tears that spilled over her cheeks with the back of one sleeve of her formal robe.

They’d planned for this moment for most of the last two years.   Finding Gedref’s world had been miraculous, but their journey hadn’t ended nearly so quickly. They’d discovered the technology on that hidden planet that would give them a way to break through the time-barrier created by the techno-magic Merlin had cast using the orb. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as picking up a piece of tech and using it. They’d had to study it and find a way to make it adapt to their modern tech, and then track down a techno-mage who could teach them to activate it.

For as long as long as those first eight years had felt, the last two had seemed obscenely long. They’d been so close to their goal, and yet still so far. Gwen couldn’t believe they’d actually reached this moment.

“Are you sure you don’t want us all to go?” Percival asked once the general merriment had died down.

Leon shook his head then realized the futility of the gesture. “No,” he said firmly, “Gwen and I will be the first to pass through the barrier. We’re not even wholly sure this will work yet.”

“It will,” Gwen said firmly, because this was definitely not a moment for doubts. She squeezed Leon’s shoulder again. “Are we ready then?”

“Everything’s ready here.” He gestured between them, smiling down at her. “Well, except us.”

“Right!” Gwen stepped away from his side and took her position in the co-pilots chair, while Leon readied himself in the pilot’s. She wasn’t dressed in her flight suit, opting instead to wear the same formal attire that she’d worn at her and Arthur’s betrothal ceremony (when she’d first promised to protect and honor Camelot at his side). It seemed fitting somehow.

Leon had dressed for the occasion as well, getting his old uniform out of storage. He’d been happy to find that it still fit, but Gwen could see the pride that lit his eye at wearing it again.

“All set,” she reported when she finished buckling in.

“All ships report ready?” Leon asked over the general broadcast.   He got verbal confirmation from each and then instructed, “Keep position here while I move in range. Stay back unless we signal.   I’m going off ship-wide comms, but signal if you need anything. And wish us luck!”

He waited to deactivate the open communications between all the ships until the voices chorusing out their well-wishes fell silent. Gwen looked over at him and said a soft, “Good luck.”

He smiled, tight-lipped but reassuring. “Alright, I’m taking us towards the last known coordinates of the edge of the field.”

When Merlin had activated the temporal shift using the orb, he’d encompassed a rough sphere of space large enough that it captured the whole of Albion’s solar system within.   Gwen knew that their last readings of that area contained within the ‘time bubble’ had been from just before they’d gotten _Excalibur_ outside of its circumference and the whole of a star system had just vanished from view.  

Therefore she knew that as they approached the empty space it wasn’t as if there was some barrier to cross or any other physical indication that remained of what was no longer there. Albion existed in a different time continuum now; one they had virtually no knowledge of. Still, they wanted to bring the ship close to where – if it had still existed in their own time – Camelot might be found. They’d extrapolated the approximate position where Camelot could be expected to exist based upon her solar rotation, and they set their destination point.

“We’re forty-two astronomical units out from Camelot’s suspected position,” Leon reported after a few minutes. He kept up a steady count-down.   “Thirty-one… twenty-two… nineteen.” When he got down to single digits Leon slowed the ship, bringing _Excalibur_ close to their end-point and then stopping acceleration entirely. “We’re here.”

Gwen watched him make minute adjustments to the stabilizers to ensure they remained motionless, and then she asked, “Are we ready to activate?”

The device they’d picked up on Gedref’s world was their key to making the shift between their existing time stream and the one Merlin had shifted the time bubble to. The device itself – an unassuming little pillar affixed to their central navigation console – sat dormant.

If it worked as predicted, it would capture an area around itself – as programmed – and shift everything in that area to the ‘nearest’ (as Gwen understood it – though she knew it was much more complex than that) displaced time stream. It would act much like the orb that Merlin had used, though on a much smaller scale, and also with the ability to reverse the action, to return them to their ‘normal’ time.

Leon looked over at her and then stretched out his arm, fingers splayed out to reach for her. She grasped at them and gave them a quick and tight squeeze. “We’re ready,” he said, before letting his fingers fall away and his arm drift back to his console.

As Leon’s fingers slipped from hers, Gwen reached out instead to the waiting device and flicked at the controller switch that powered it on. Blue indicator lights chased up its sides and it began to hum softly.

“Ready with the field specifications?”

Leon nodded. “I’m entering them into the device interface now.” That was one of the reasons she and Leon had chosen to go alone; the larger the area that the device needed to cover, the more difficult the shift. They’d decided that _Excalibur_ alone, along with the two of them, would make the trip.

The device hummed just a bit louder, and the motion and patterns of lights on its sides changed, speeding up once Leon inputted the data. “There we go. I’m reading that the field is surrounding _Excalibur_ with a tolerance of three yards on all axis points. We’re ready to make the shift.”

“Let’s do this, then!” Gwen said, and she pressed down on the button that sat atop the highest point of the device.

There was a loud buzzing, like the snap of an electric strike, and everything flashed white for the briefest moment. And just as suddenly everything was normal again.

For a moment Gwen thought nothing had happened. The view out of the main screen looked no different than before.

“Did we…” she started to say.

“Hold on,” Leon interrupted. “Let me reorient the ship.” He took hold of the yolk, and that’s when Gwen realized she could see light – solar light – flickering and reflecting in the view screen.   Light that could only be coming from Albion’s binary stars.

Then Leon brought _Excalibur_ around. and there in space in front of them – bright and beautiful - was an achingly familiar blue-green planet.

“Camelot,” Gwen breathed. “Oh my god, Leon. We did it. We made it back!”

Leon’s voice shook when he replied. “I knew we’d get back to them. I never doubted.” He sniffed surreptitiously (and Gwen didn’t blame him, her own cheeks were damp – but this was Leon’s _home_ ) and then coughed away the roughness. “I’m taking us down through the atmosphere.”

Though the armrests of her seat were a smooth molded plati-core material that was impermeable to all but the heaviest damage, Gwen would have sworn she was leaving fingernail impressions in the grips as Leon guided _Excalibur_ down through the clouds. He landed the ship at the Royal Shipyards, in the very same bay where they’d taken off.

They disembarked and made their way towards the Central Spire and the King’s Council chamber (the first place they knew to look). Gwen couldn’t help but gaze at everything along the way. Nothing seemed all that different from the day they left. The season had changed – it had been nearly midsummer back then, while the surrounding flora showed hints of the changing colors that meant autumn was approaching - but otherwise the auto-paths were still clear and the buildings still standing tall. Even the decorative foliage in the Spire’s Gardens was neatly trimmed and the late season flowers were in bloom.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Devastation maybe? Or at least signs of disrepair and abandonment. She’d thought that Merlin and Arthur would’ve been forced to hide out from the encroaching fleet.

Then again, Merlin’s whole reason for taking the drastic action of the temporal shift had been because he knew he wouldn’t have the power to protect Albion _and_ keep the rest of the galaxy safe from the Mercian fleet.   He could’ve focused on the destroying the ships, but Camelot’s own armada hadn’t put much of a dent in their numbers, and as soon as the Mercian coalition realized that Arthur had ordered the evacuation of Camelot and the surrounding inhabited planets, they’d started to divide their army to move onto the next target. Merlin had put a stop to that before the conflict could spread throughout the galaxy.

She supposed that once they’d been locked out of normal time, Merlin wouldn’t have to split his attentions like that. Perhaps he’d found a way to counter Mercia’s seemingly endless mechanized troops and their countless attack vessels and the behemoth ship-builders – spacefaring factories that trailed the fleet and were quick to reconfigure even the smallest of debris into workable unmanned attack drones over and over.

“It’s eerie,” she heard Leon say, as he hurried a little ahead of her. Normally he kept his stride short to allow her to keep pace, but she couldn’t fault him his eagerness in this.

“It is,” she agreed. “But it’s… lovely too. It means that…” Gwen trailed off. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it could only be good.

Eventually they reached the foot of the staircase that lead up into the Central Spire (where they’d last watched Arthur hurrying back to Merlin), and beyond that, the council chamber where they’d last seen Merlin.   Unspoken, they both stopped. Leon put an arm around her shoulder and Gwen curved and arm around his back.

“Shall we?” Leon asked with a courtier’s half-bow.

Gwen, giddy with nerves and anticipation and a whole plethora of feelings welling up inside of her, inclined her head.

Before she could reply, the slapping of booted feet on neu-marble caught Gwen’s ear and she looked up just as the noise came to a stuttering stop.

Gwen froze in place.

Arthur stood on the next landing, his eyes wide and arms akimbo, staring down at them, unblinking, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His face went first slack in disbelief and then it lit up in pure joy.

“Merlin!” Arthur called out then, grinning the widest most boyish grin Gwen had ever seen, “You’ll never guess who’s here!!”

He scrambled down the steps to meet them, while she and Leon rushed up, and just before she was engulfed in the most amazing hug of her life, from over his shoulder Gwen saw Merlin poke his head around the doorway, wide-eyed and beaming down at all of them with unrivaled joy.

And suddenly everything was right in the universe…


End file.
